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  3. The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab

The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab

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问题    The new paper was spurred by the discovery of several 120,000-year-old tools at a desert archaeological site in the United Arab Emirates. The presence of the tools—whose design is uniquely African, experts say—so early in the region suggests early humans marched out of Africa into the Arabian Peninsula directly from the Horn of Africa, roughly present-day Somalia. Previously, scientists had thought humans first left via the Nile Valley or the Far East.
   "Up till now we thought of cultural developments leading to the opportunity of people moving out of Africa," said study co-author Hans-Peter Uerpmann, a retired archaeobiologist at the University of Tubingen in Germany. "Now we see, I think, that it was the environment that was the key to this," Uerpmann said during a press briefing Wednesday.
   During the past few years, a series of tools were discovered at the Jebel Faya site in the U.A.E., some of which—such as hand axes—had a two-sided appearance previously seen only in early Africa. Scientists used a specific technique, which measures naturally occurring radiation stored in the sand, to determine the age of sand grains buried with the stone tools. For the climatic data, scientists studied the climate records of ancient lakes and rivers in cave stalagmites, as well as changes in the level of the Red Sea. This warmer period 130,000 years or so ago caused more rainfall on the Arabian Peninsula, turning it into a series of abundant rivers that humans might have boated. During this period the southern Red Sea’s levels dropped, offering a "brief window of time" for humans to easily cross the sea—which was then as little as 2.5 miles wide, according to Adrian Parker, a physical geographer from Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom.
   Once humans entered the peninsula, they dispersed and likely reached the Jebel Faya site by about 125,000 years ago, according to the study, published in the journal Science. Geneticist Spencer Wells called the discovery a "very interesting find," especially because the Arabian Peninsula is becoming a hot spot for archaeological finds. But he noted that the study doesn’t "rewrite the book on what we know about human migratory history." That’s because tools dating to the same period have already been found in Israel, so it’s "consistent with what we suspected" about an earlier wave of migration into the Middle East, said Wells, director of the National Geographic Society’s Genographic Project. Wells also noted there’s no evidence yet that the migrants in the new paper were our ancestors—the group, and their genes, may have died out long ago.
   Bence Viola, of the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, agreed the finding was interesting but not that surprising, also citing the evidence of humans in Israel about 120,000 years ago. Viola, who wasn’t involved in the study, added that the migration route proposed in the paper makes sense on another level—the Arabian Peninsula would have been something early humans were used to. Why they migrated is another question, since they wouldn’t have been hurting for food or resources in their African homeland, Viola noted. "Curiosity," he said, "is a pretty human desire."
   [A] said that the Red Sea was as little as 2.5 miles wide 130,000 years or so ago.
   [B] noted that the study doesn’t rewrite the human migratory history that we know.
   [C] said that the environment was the key to people’s moving out of Africa
   [D] was the place where some tools previously seen only in early Africa were discovered.
   [E] said that people migrated because they lacked food and resources in their African homeland.
   [F] said that the migrants in the new paper were our ancestors.
   [G] noted that the reason why early humans moved out of Africa is another question.
Hans-Peter Uerpmann
选项
答案C
解析 Hans-Peter Uerpmann出现在第二段。该段末句提到，魏尔波曼在周三的一次新闻发布会上表示现在我们应该明白环境才是关键。C项中的environment和the key to复现了原文原词，而people’s moving out of Africa即文中this所指的内容，故确定C为答案。
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